Ewan McGregor in a scene from the motion picture "Big Fish." (Gannett News Service, Zade Rosenthal/Columbia Pictures) Big Fish Starring: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, Billy Crudup. Director: Tim Burton. Rated PG-13: Adult references, nudity, innuendo. Running time: 110 minutes. view the trailer | official website After many years and countless adventures, Edward Bloom is well known as a teller of tall tales about his colorful life as a less than ordinary young man, when his wanderlust took him around the world and back again. Bloom’s fabled stories charm everyone he encounters except his son Will, who has also left home but in this case to get out from under his father’s considerable shadow. When Edward becomes ill and his wife, Sandra, tries to reconcile them, Will embarks on his own personal journey trying to separate the myth from the reality of his father’s life and come to terms with the man’s giant feats and great failings.

by Jack Garner, Gannett News Service

"Big Fish" offers an irrepressible tribute to the tall tale and expresses quirky gratitude for the wonders of an overactive imagination.

It is, as its narrator states, "a Southern story full of lies and fabrications, but all the truer for their inclusion."

The Big Fish of the title - and the teller of tall tales - is Ed Bloom, played as a young man by Ewan McGregor and as an old man by Albert Finney. He has spent his entire life spinning seemingly impossible yarns about giant friends, conjoined twin singers, a witch with an eye patch, bedeviled communities and so much more.

And he concludes that he's a big fish. As his wife (Jessica Lange) says, "The biggest fish in the river gets that way by never being caught." Bloom's stories provide oddball entertainment for most listeners, but a ton of frustration for his son, Will (Billy Crudup). He simply wants to know his real father. "Big Fish" is Will's odyssey through his father's extravagance and fantasy in pursuit of the real Ed Bloom.

You probably won't be surprised to learn that "Big Fish" comes from director Tim Burton ("Edward Scissorhands," "Ed Wood," "Batman," "Planet of the Apes," and "Mars Attacks!"). Now Tim's wacky party includes a guy who thinks he's a big fish.

Burton paying homage to an overactive imagination is little more than self-analysis.

But for filmgoers, it's amusing and clever - and even a bit romantic. Just as Preston Sturges' 1940s classic "Sullivan's Travels" has stood as a definitive ode to the value of humor, "Big Fish" may survive as a quintessential statement on imagination.

The film is revealed in flashbacks as Will sits at the bedside of his ailing father, hoping to finally get beneath the clever, shiny veneer of Pop's imagination. But Ed is unflappable. He spins tale after tale of his adventures in the Spanish moss-covered environs of his youth. We learn how he came to leave his hometown, his college days, and how he met and won the woman of his dreams. But each seemingly conventional step is embroidered with amazing incidents and characters. He drives his car underwater and sees a mermaid. He befriends an 8-foot-tall giant. He runs off to join the circus. No imagination has ever been as fevered as Ed Bloom's.

But is it all just imagination?

The performances are generally fine (though McGregor's Southern accent is sometimes more exaggerated than Bloom's tales). But "Big Fish's" true star is Burton and his own fevered imagination. Don't let this "Big Fish" be the one that got away.